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Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

uni-goettingen.de

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Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#11

Post by alanbernstein »

wolfram74 wrote: post #10

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious -- The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.” -- Say…

It currently requires 1e42 (say), and 30 orders of magnitude less brings it into the realm of possibility with a large power plant.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#12

Post by wolfram74 »

alanbernstein wrote: post #11
wolfram74 wrote: post #10

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious -- The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.” -- Say…

It currently requires 1e42 (say), and 30 orders of magnitude less brings it into the realm of possibility with a large power plant.

Continuing with the assumptions, it takes /us/ 1E42 watts, but the authors speculate that the universal lower bound is indistinguishable from 0. Much like how we can't make a useful fusion reactor, the universe at large has made loads of them because. If their suspicions are right and the lower bound is so low, it would need to be some incredibly contrived collection of events to not occur naturally with some regularity.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#13

Post by checkyoursudo »

rdsubhas wrote: post #7
monkeycantype wrote: post #3

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

I kind of disagree here. 50 thousand years — it doesn't matter if people are biologically alive. You, your friends, family, society, relationships — would all be very, very different when you come back. If you just meant "see friends and family", yeah technically you could see each other I guess. Practically, might as well be an alien.

You haven't met my family, I see.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#14

Post by dangirsh »

koolba wrote: post #8
dreen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?

> Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right? Technically they wouldn’t be older, you’d be younger.

"relativity"

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#16

Post by tobmlt »

dreen wrote: post #6
monkeycantype wrote: post #3

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?

The trip becomes quicker (to you) the faster you go. If you could ride a beam of light, you’d be there instantaneously, thanks to length contraction. Meanwhile 4 years would pass on earth in some sense. (To an observer watching from earth with a hypothetical telescope, you are seen to arrive only after eight years total. Of course you could just ride the light back and tell him about it all, ha.)

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#17

Post by NiceWayToDoIT »

tobmlt wrote: post #2

I presently have no time to get into GR, but surely wish I did. Here instead of comment I offer two papers: Erik Lentz (underlying the work in the press release here): https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07125.pdf And similar seeming work by another group at something called the “advanced propulsion lab” (who are they?) https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.06824.pdf It’s interesting that they both claim positive energy solutions that,…

Is there any physical proof that theory is sound in those papers?

I mean have they tried to send anything electron, atom or anything small that would confirm FTL speed ?

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#18

Post by riggsdk »

wolfram74 wrote: post #10

It is early in the morning, so I'm still irritable, but this line is pretty egregious -- The energy savings would need to be drastic, of approximately 30 orders of magnitude to be in range of modern nuclear fission reactors.” He goes on to say: “Fortunately, several energy-saving mechanisms have been proposed in earlier research that can potentially lower the energy required by nearly 60 orders of magnitude.” -- Say…

For a long time I thought of the sun as being the product of many cycles of recycled material from older suns - but if you look at the cosmic calendar our sun has been around for roughly half (a little less than) the age of the universe! For all we know we could be the first intelligent species to reach the space age in our observable universe.

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#19

Post by klingon78 »

Does “Craft using an inertial mass reduction device”[1] use the same concept as described?:

I don’t know if there’s a difference between this and the Alcubierre drive.

Perhaps the tic-tacs were prototypes, given the patent and claims made by others. They may not be FTL capable, though, at least not within Earth’s atmosphere[2].

If the technology were to exist, it would be seen as a serious weapon and threat to security as much as a tool for colonization and exploration, so why a patent would be filed and left as much is beyond me.

I don’t want to legitimize make-believe things, though, if that is what they are, which is tough to say with much certainty.

[1]- https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en

[2]- https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/12/tic-tac-ufo-video-q-...

Re: Breaking the warp barrier for faster-than-light travel

#20

Post by maxerickson »

dreen wrote: post #6
monkeycantype wrote: post #3

We don’t need hyperexotic negative energy to travel to the stars, we just need to live a lot longer, and we need our friends and family to live longer too so we can comeback and see them again.

I agree but the nearest star is (only?) 4 light years away. If we only managed to travel close to the speed of light, we surely live long enough today. Time dilation will cause our friends to be older by a few years than they should be, but not by that much right?

With FTL you could wish yourself a good trip before you left.
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